German youth look to far-right in latest elections

Oberursel, Frankfurt: Konrad Adam was there, in the room, when the Alternative for Germany was founded.

Adam, a retired journalist for German national daily newspaper Die Welt, was one of 18 self-identified economically conservative men who in 2013 gathered at a community hall in Oberursel, north-west of Frankfurt, angry at European Union bailouts to indebted members after the global financial crisis.

Supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party at a rally last week.Credit: Getty

Now, 11 years on, he despairs. The 82-year-old doesn’t recognise his old party, known as AfD, any more. He quit on January 1, 2021, having declared it overrun by “extremists and opportunists”.

Meanwhile, the popularity of the far-right party is surging. On the weekend, it won a party record number of votes in the European parliamentary elections. AfD polled 16 per cent, second only to the Christian Democrats, the major catch-all party of the centre-right in German politics, on 30 per cent.

The AfD polled 5 percentage points better than it did in the 2019 elections and, in a sharp rebuke of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government, polled higher than each of Germany’s three ruling coalition parties.

Not even a string of scandals surrounding the AfD could halt its progress. It was forced to expel its lead candidate from its delegation, Maximilian Krah after he caused outrage with a joint Financial Times and La Repubblica interview in which he said that not everyone who served in Adolf Hitler’s SS was a criminal.

An AfD rally in Mannheim, Germany last week. The party has gained more seats in the European parliament.Credit: Getty

After those articles came out, the conservative Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament – which is dominated by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National – decided to eject the AfD, in a move that threatened to leave the party in the political wilderness.

Exit polls from the weekend found that AfD voters were most concerned about their economic welfare. This reflected the backlash in some countries against the cost of green policies and the growing demand for stronger measures to stop irregular migration. It’s another sign of the shift to the political right across Europe.

In Italy and France, the respective conservative movements led by Giorgia Meloni and Le Pen drew almost 30 per cent of the vote to finish first in those polls; in the Netherlands, the more hardline Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom came in second; and, in Poland, the Law and Justice Party came second.

Ultraconservative and nationalist parties also won or made significant gains in Austria, Cyprus and Greece. Several other countries, such as Portugal, will also send nationalist Members of the European Parliament to Strasbourg.

Konrad Adam, the founder of the AfD, quit the party in 2021, claiming the movement had been overrun by extremists.Credit: Rob Harris

This election also marked the first time that 16- and 17-year-old Germans were able to vote. AfD had major wins in the under-30 demographic, courtesy of a major TikTok campaign, and increased its share of that category by 10 per cent.

Krah was the star of the social platform with simple and direct messages. One became rather notorious.

“One in three young men in Germany has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them?” Krah asked. His advice continued: “Don’t watch porn, don’t vote green, go outside into the fresh air. Be confident. And above all, don’t believe you need to be nice and soft. Real men stand on the far right. Real men are patriots. That’s the way to find a girlfriend!”

Far-right AFD politician Gabrielle Mailbeck has campaigned on social media to reach a new generation of voters.Credit: X/Gabrielle Mailbeck

German intelligence services have classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist organisation. Several branches across Germany have been classed as “confirmed” extremist groups amid the party’s increasingly xenophobic rhetoric.

Three-quarters of Germans now say they believe that the AfD poses a threat to democracy, and many took to the streets en masse earlier this year against the party’s hardline immigration agenda.

Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party won just 13.9 per cent of the European parliamentary vote – its worst result in a nationwide democratic election in more than 130 years – warned that the policies of the far-right populist party must not become normalised.

“We should never get used to that,” he said. “The task must always be to push them back again.”

Among Adam’s biggest concerns is the division the AfD is causing. It has pounced on short memories and young voters and pointed out that it gained most of its votes in Germany’s eastern federal states.

“I fear this could tear the country apart again,” Adam said. “I think for many people, they don’t have memories of two Germanies. But it is still so raw for many of us.”

Initially, the AfD was a minor party with little broad appeal, but a 2015 decision by then-chancellor Angela Merkel to allow more than 1 million refugees from Syria and Iraq into Germany changed the party’s prospects. Its platform became primarily anti-Muslim and anti-Islam.

While the party’s founders have openly criticised the AfD and some have resigned over its move to the radical right, it shifted its geographic focus, as its anti-immigration stance won increasing support from eastern parts of Germany.

Nationally, the AfD gained six European seats at the weekend for a total of 16 – one of its best results in a nationwide election, although lower than the 22 per cent share that polls suggested in January.

Stefan Lehne, a senior fellow at the analysis agency Carnegie Europe, said two factors had sustained the AfD’s popularity.

“The party taps into growing public unease about Berlin’s lack of a coherent migration and asylum policy at a time when the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Germany has significantly increased,” he said.

“The party further leverages growing anti-Islam and antisemitic sentiments, which the established parties rarely, if ever, raise.”

Lehne said the other factor was that Scholz’s government had failed to communicate the chancellor’s policies on Ukraine, climate change, and Germany’s relations with the EU, NATO, and China.

“All of these issues involve strategic planning, money, and conviction,” Lehne said. “Scholz, who leads a party that is divided, particularly over Russia, has yet to take a robust and unambiguous attitude toward the AfD.”

Constanze Stelzenmüller, an expert on German, European, and transatlantic foreign and security policy and strategy at the Brookings Institution, said the warning signs of radicalisation within the AfD had been there for years.

“Indeed, today, you could say of all the hard-right parties in Europe, the AfD is really the only one that’s not trying to pretend it is anything but what it is, which is racist, white, ethnonationalist, Islamophobic and bent on changing the German constitutional order,” she said.

Along with Krah’s interview, the AfD has been embroiled in several other scandals this year, including a secret meeting of its senior officials to plan the mass expulsion of immigrants, which has raised doubts about the party’s commitment to democratic values.

Its other controversial figures include Petr Bystron, who was second on the AfD’s list of candidates for Europe. Bystron, now an MP, is being investigated by German police and prosecutors on suspicion of money laundering and corruption. He is suspected of taking money from the Kremlin to spout Russian propaganda.

In May, the AfD leader in the state of Thuringia, Bjorn Hocke, was fined €13,000 for using a forbidden Nazi slogan in a 2021 speech.

Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s leaders, has called for Germany to hold a parliamentary election.Credit: AP

Meanwhile, Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s two leaders, demanded on Monday that Scholz call new parliamentary elections – as French President Emmanuel Macron did after his party’s dismal European results.

The 45-year-old investment-banking economist, buoyed by her party becoming Germany’s “second force”, declared: “People have had enough.”

Brussels-based Lehne said it was important not to overstate the influence of the AfD, pointing out that the party has become too radical even for Le Pen.

“The likelihood of the AfD ever attaining power in Berlin is remote in the short term,” he said. “Even if the party is running in second place in the opinion polls, none of the established parties would consider teaming up with the AfD to form a coalition; the party is too toxic.”

Despite his lament, Adam doesn’t regret forming the party. He stressed that a genuine conservative alternative to Merkel’s government was needed at the time. But where the AfD has come unstuck, he said, was that it comprised “too many people who see excellent earning opportunities and mandates for themselves.”

“I am convinced that it is beneficial to the vibrant democratic life if the voter has a choice if he goes to vote,” he said. “I just don’t think the AfD can be the answer.”

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